Or are my questions — they're only questions! — too cynical? Consider the sublime hedge phrase "worthy step." If Barack Obama were the captain of the Titanic, would the New York Times call rearranging the deck chairs a "worthy step"?

The best way to get consensus is to assume the people the 'consensus' is targeted for are hopelessly ignorant, limit critical discussion only to those who accept your thesis, then convince the target group, i.e. everyone who disagrees with you, that it is in their best interests to accept their pronouncements because they spoke it.

Cap n' Trade is designed to keep the unwashed masses at the back of the cave ooohing and ahhing over the figures dancing on the cave wall while the elitists use hand puppets in front of the not-too-big fire to distract us from their self-serving machinations.

H/T Plato and his myth of the caves which apparently is not taught in schools anymore.

Speaking of Wisconin, I lost a hub cap, axle cover on our coach after hitting a pothole driving across the state recently. The signs proclaiming "Your stimulus money at work" were breathtaking. They reminded me of the old "Burma Shave signs" along the side of the road.

"would the New York Times call rearranging the deck chairs a "worthy step""

Brilliant.And indeed, they have.

One has to ask, in the Obama administration, is the eventual economic destruction a regrettable downturn to be weathered with their help, or a crisis, and therefore a fucking valuable thing that cannot be wasted?

If unintentional and just stupid hubris, the blame will remain on Bush and the GOP.

If intentional, soon enough, internal enemies will be identified, kulaks and wreckers and profiteers who must be blamed and dealt with.

Speaking as an economist, I think we reach consensus the same way as every other academic discipline does--by talking among ourselves and presenting peer-reviewed papers, usually at annual conventions. The American Economic Association meets in January, so I would hesitate to say in November that economists have reached a consensus on a stimulus package passed in February.

In fact, looking at the NYT article, it says that liberal economists like the stimulus or think it too small; conservative economists think it a waste; and then we have a third group that thinks it "a worthy step." Can you tell from the article how large these three groups are? I can't, and I don't know what the answer would be. I think it is odd in anything other than journalistic terms to describe a three-way split in opinion of unknown size as a "consensus."

Economists have reached consensus on some issues. I'd be willing to bet that about 95 percent of economists think that the minimum wage, rent control, and other price floors and ceilings are bad ideas and that free trade benefits every country that relies on it.

Nonetheless, I doubt economists will reach a consensus on the stimulus. Keynesians who rely on theories that dominated economics back in the 1950s and 1960s almost certainly would endorse the stimulus. Economists who rely on more recent approaches--monetarists and the rational expectations crowd--would be appalled, and the neo-Keynesians would be sceptical, but persuadable.

"Why doesn't the NY Times seek a concensus of the few economists (and others) who predicted the events of the past few years?"

No matter what happens, you can always find a few people who predicted it. Given an infinite number of monkeys typing, one of them will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. That doesn't make him a playwright.

"Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say."

Offhand: What precisely, is a "liberal-leaning economist?" When did "economist" become just another branch of politics?

But on to the meat of the topic: The fact of the matter is that there wasn't even a first stimulus.

The first $787 billion was regular old pork doled out to interest groups and sold as "stimulus." Much of it went to Democrat-leaning states to cover their budget deficits ... largely into teacher salaries to protect members of the largest teachers' union - a staunch supporter of Commander in Thief Barack Obama.

Very little of it was spent to stimulate job creation. It all was funneled into the pockets of people who, face it, are the government. (If you're a teacher, or a firefighter, or a cop ... you're the government).

The country needs a first stimulus - as evidenced by the 20% unemployment rate (including underemployed).

"Speaking as an economist, I think we reach consensus the same way as every other academic discipline does--by talking among ourselves and presenting peer-reviewed papers ..."

Do you guys work like the AGW "scientists" ... using Alinsky-type tactics to attack disagreeable peers? Massaging or outright faking data that doesn't fit into which ever way your economics "lean?"

We're getting a good glimpse into how "peer review" and "journals" work now that we're seeing the unexpurgated emails of scientists foisting global warming fakery on us.

Please tell me you're not using these same platitudes to make us feel all warm and fuzzy about the "science" of economics.

The NY Times has it right ... the science of economics depends on nothing except which way your politics leans and who is paying for the latest grant that keeps you from having to actually get a real job.

This is all you need to know about the predictions and views of economists: the very best ones (and I know just such one) are sitting at fixed income trading desks making millions and talking to no one.

If the New York Times wants to get good views on the future of the economy, they should find the 5 largest bond portfolio managers, and see if they can get them to talk, and not just "talk position" as they say in the industry (which is what Al Gore does - he "talks position" every day.)

Meanwhile Darleen at PW has the agenda for "health care" and it is a wee bit broader than signing up the uninsured:

•An income surtax on taxpayers earning more than $500,000 a year,[1]•An excise tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health insurance plans that cost more than $8,500 a year for individuals or $21,000 for families,[2]•An excise tax on medical devices such as wheelchairs, breast pumps, and syringes used by diabetics for insulin injections,[3]•A cap on the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance without offsetting tax cuts,[4]•A limit on itemized deductions for taxpayers with a top income tax rate greater than 28 percent,[5]•A windfall profits tax on health insurance companies,[6]•A value-added tax, which would tax the value added to a product at each stage of production,[7]•An increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax to 3.4 percent for incomes great than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married filers),[8]•An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages including non-diet soda and sports drinks,[9]•Higher taxes on alcoholic beverages including beer, wine, and spirits,[10]•A tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage of up to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income,[11]•A limit on contributions to health savings accounts,[12]•An 8 percent tax on all wages paid by employers that do not provide their employees health insurance that satisfies the requirements defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services,[13]•A limit on contributions to flexible spending arrangements,[14]•Elimination of the deduction for expenses associated with Medicare Part D subsidies,[15]•An increase in taxes on international businesses,[16]•Elimination of the tax credits paper companies take for biofuels they create in their production process–the so-called “Black Liquor credit,”[17]•Fees on insured and self-insured health plans,[18]•A limit or repeal of the itemized deduction for medical expenses,[19]•A limit on the Qualified Medical Expense definition,[20]•An increase in the payroll taxes on students,[21]•An extension of the Medicare payroll tax to all state and local government employees,[22]•An increase in taxes on hospitals,[23]•An increase in the estate tax,[24]•Increased efforts to close the mythical “tax gap,”[25]•A 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures such as Botox treatments, tummy tucks, and face lifts,[26]•A tax on drug companies,[27]•An increase in the corporate tax on providers of health insurance,[28] and•A $500,000 deduction limitation for the compensation paid by health insurance companies to their officers, employees, and directors.[29]

They're not only questions. You actually believe they're valid critiques of any process among researchers that involves "conferring and corroborating".

I mean, I realize you think that, like certain bloggers, scientists are supposed to stick to themselves and issue pronouncements from on high, without regard for any critical appraisals by other experts in their field, and that the only point of conferring would be for the purpose of achieving the same "ideological" corroboration that bloggers get. But they don't and you can't stand to accept that.

I expect her to come out publicly as a Creationist in about - oh - five minutes.

How anti-science can Ann get?

1) She thinks that there is a massive, worldwide conspiracy between thousands of climatolgists, government organizations, and universities to fool the entire world about global warming.

2) She is against vaccinating teenagers for HPV, which will prevent thousands of cases of cervical cancer every year. But she thinks there is a massive conspiracy between health organizations and the government to prevent Pap smears for 19-21 year olds, just for the sake of saving money. So she favors a policy that will result in cervical cancer deaths, but opposes a policy that results in less death.

3) Ann also thinks there is a massive conspiracy to stop breast cancer testing for women aged 40-50. But I'm almost certain that she opposes a Democratic Bill that would force insurance companies to provide this coverage.

I won't even get into Ann's NIG conspiracy theory, or the Air Force 1 photo conspiracy theory.

But she thinks it's ok to call Andrew Sullivan a faggot and pray that he dies of AIDS, simply because Sullivan wants a few questions answered about Palin's pregnancy. And Sullivan has not said that he thinks Palin lied about pregnancy - just that he wanted questions answered.

But Ann is convinced that global warming is now a massive fraud. As do 99% of her commenters.

"Nearly a tenth of the package, $70 billion, comes from a provision adjusting the alternative minimum tax so it does not hit middle-income taxpayers this year. That routine fix, which would do nothing to stimulate the economy, was added in part to seek Republican votes."

I'm left wondering what the effect on the economy would be if we had NOT added this 'routine fix'. Maybe the fix does nothing to stimulate the economy, but NOT fixing it would surely have been worse.

"Nearly a tenth of the package, $70 billion, comes from a provision adjusting the alternative minimum tax so it does not hit middle-income taxpayers this year. That routine fix, which would do nothing to stimulate the economy, was added in part to seek Republican votes."

Actually, that is probably one of the best things they did. Far better to have permanently indexed the damn thing, but, you get what you can.

The problem is that most of what Obama's "Stimulus" package did did nothing for economic recovery, and likely hurt in that respect.

For example, most of the other "tax cuts" were no such thing. They went almost entirely to people who don't pay income taxes already, and, thus could not be tax cuts, and were actually one time payments (or bribes) to them.

The problem is that what is needed are tax rate cuts, which are an incentive for long range investment. Instead, we see one time payments, much of which went to political allies, and, in particular, already employed government workers, and since then, multiple tax rate increases, most notably in the Health Care "reform" legislation, but also in Cap and Trade.

Personally, I think that the only "economists" who could seriously back anything remotely resembling the last "stimulus" package are hard core Keynesians. Somehow, they think that we didn't squander enough money the last time around, and need to up the ante.

I might suggest that the reason for all this is, in reality, that they know that their timing window is rapidly closing, and this, along with Health Care "reform" and "Tax and Bribe" (aka Cap and Trade) are their last chance in a generation at the public trough. If the elections were today, there is a decent chance that the Republicans would retake the House, and as the Democrats continue following totally feckless economic policies, there is little reason to believe that their popularity and trust to govern will continue to plummet.

1) She thinks that there is a massive, worldwide conspiracy between thousands of climatolgists, government organizations, and universities to fool the entire world about global warming.

Except that there aren't thousands of scientists doing original research, since the original data is very tightly controlled by those who have a specific political agenda.

And, the grant money has not been parceled out indiscriminately, but rather, as we expected, and these emails seem to corroborate, the grant money has been specifically steered towards AGW proponents and away from AGW skeptics and opponents. And, of course, ditto for publication in peer review journals.

As a note, some had been wondering how the AGW proponents would respond to the disclosure of all that incriminating information over the last couple of days, and this is one of the first, rather weak, attempts. I think maybe we can call it a "what scandal?" approach. It, of course, ignores that these people were at the core, and not the periphery, of the "research" and the "debate", and it appears that they were cheating and falsifying as fast as they could to get their desired, political, goals realized.

The make-up" of the "new consensus" in the Times headline was right there in the first paragraph: "some liberal-leaning economists". The second paragraph refers to "some conservative-leaning economists" disagreeing that the stimulus was a success -- however, that didn't merit mention in the Times headline. No surprise -- only the "consensus" fit to headline.

But she thinks it's ok to call Andrew Sullivan a faggot and pray that he dies of AIDS

I'd ask you to cite the specific posting(s) where Professor Althouse makes those alleged statements... but, why kid ourselves, here? We both know, from past experience, that -- having duly pinched out another malodorous magnum opus, with nary a stray fiber of evidentiary filler accompanying -- you'll simply scuttle back under the sink at the first mention of actually, you know, backing up any part or particle of the spew du jour in question.

Kent - I never said Ann made those specific comments. I said she it was "ok to call" Andrew Sullivan a faggot and hope that he dies of AIDS, etc.

Her commenters make those comments almost anytime there is a post about Sullivan. In fact, they usually expand to make more general abusive comments about gay people in general, or those with HIV. And as I said, Ann is ok with it. Not only does she leave those comments up, but she refuses to even make a public statement in opposition to those comments.

As for people who believe in Climategate - sorry you are all morons. Really. You're morons. not to mention that you're all morally degenerate for supporting a criminal act, in this case theft.

Remember the outrage of when Palin's e-mail account was broken into? Here is the post:

I said she it was "ok to call" Andrew Sullivan a faggot and hope that he dies of AIDS, etc.

Yes, I understood that to be your demonstrably mendacious assertion from Jump Street, thank you. And I repeat, in turn: you can no more provide any sort of verifiable citation or link to Professor Althouse "saying it's okay to call someone a faggot, or that it's okay to say they hope someone dies of AIDS" than you can hard evidence for the geographical, real-world existence of Candyland, or Narnia.

You're simply pinwheeling and spluttering, now, in pale and obvious attempt to distract from your naked inability to prove me wrong by providing precisely those statements, here and now. That being plainly and promptly called out on the sad ineffectuality of said shucking-and-jiving leaves you shamefaced and humiliated, publicly, is (admittedly) a very hard cheese, indeed.

A far wiser man than you give any outward indication of being might actually manage to learn something valuable from that sort of experience.

As for people who believe in Climategate - sorry you are all morons. Really. You're morons.

Well of course you can't find any evidence -- Althouse never said that.

Instead, you shout "Squirrel!" in hopes of derailing the conversation.

It's tiresome to the adults, and if you are paying attention (which I doubt) you should be noticing that it doesn't have much effect.

The whole point is (and again this is such an obvious point I am appalled it has to be restated) groupthink is not science. Data is science.

The e-mails from CRU show that the employees and directors (I hesitate to use the good words "scientists" or "researchers") were fudging data and attempting to hide the real data from other scientists and researchers.

The key point is the faked "hockey stick" where fake data was pasted in to show the upward trend of 1998-2000 for Al Gore's famous PowerPoint slides.

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